The Andalucian climbers will
head now to Punta Arenas, closer to Antarctica, where they will attempt to
reach their fourth summit in the Seven Summit Project

Seven Summit club climbers
Juan Antonio Huisa and Pedro López have crowned the summit of Villarrica
volcano (2,840 m), in a preparation phase before their destination, Mount
Vinson (4,897 m.) in Antarctica. The ascent of the Andalucian expedition,
which is sponsored by Consejería de Turismo, Comercio y Deporte, has been
useful to probe the materials which the climbers will use in the Antarctic
adventure.

This climb has been the last
tuning before leaving to Antarctica. Mount Vinson is great effort because of
the immense logistic complexity needed to get to such a far away place with
such low temperatures. Zones close to the summit have been reached, during
the Austral winter, with extreme temperatures of -88º Celsius and winds of up
to 320 kilometers per hour.

During the ascent to the
volcano, the climbers have been able to face the enormous activity in the
mountain. "During the entire ascent we could perfectly see the immense column
of fumes that emerged from the interior of the crater. Almost everybody gets
to the border of the crater and turn around, but the border in the front is 30
meters higher, so we continued until we got to the highest point", said Huisa
and López.

The crater has a diameter of
300 meters and is 60 meters deep. They said, "we covered almost all the
perimeter of the crater and when we were on the highest place, the wind
changed, and a thick blanket of hot and sulfurous fumes surrounded us, we
could hardly see anything and we breathed with difficulty. It was dangerous
but the view was spectacular, we were seeing incandescent lava, something
incredible".

After their first objective,
the climbers are heading now to Punta Arenas in Tierra del Fuego, from where
they will leave to the frozen continent. The Andalucian climbers reached the
summit of Kilimanjaro in December 2002, and later Mount Kosciusko and Elbrus,
so the Antarctica expedition is the middle of their Seven Summit project.